Investing.com -- Fresh off its spin-off from commercial foodservice equipment maker Middleby Corp (NASDAQ: MIDD), Midera Food Processing Inc (NASDAQ: MFP) has begun trading as an independent public company, marking the start of its next chapter as a leading pure-play food processing technology platform.

In an interview, CEO Mark Salman discusses the rationale behind the separation, the company’s growth strategy, its acquisition pipeline, and how automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping the food processing industry.

What went into the decision to spin off Midera from Middleby? What greater efficiencies/opportunities do you hope to realize at both companies from separating the businesses?

Mark Salman: The spin-off was the culmination of years of strategic planning as the food processing business at Middleby had grown into something distinct and powerful, a food processing technology platform with more than 30 industry-leading brands serving industrial protein, bakery, and snack producers.

The business had amassed its own customers, growth drivers, and investment needs. As independent companies, each business gains the strategic focus and financial flexibility to pursue the opportunities in its own market.

For Midera, it means dedicating 100% of our capital, our M&A team, and our management attention to food processing technology and innovation. We’ve been very deliberate about becoming a pure play. Every investment decision, every product initiative, and every customer engagement is now directed entirely at food processing. We have a capital allocation framework built for this business, which is focused on organic reinvestment first, disciplined return-driven acquisitions second, all within a conservative leverage framework and an M&A engine that was previously shared across a larger enterprise now focused entirely on our pipeline.

We believe this focused approach will accelerate growth and drive significant value creation for the shareholders of both companies.

Can you tell us more about how Midera will be structured as a public company? What should investors know about the scale of the business and its ownership as it begins trading?

Mark Salman: Middleby distributed 100% of Midera’s shares pro rata to its stockholders, with each Middleby shareholder receiving one share of Midera common stock for every Middleby share held as of the June 26 record date.

Middleby retains no ownership interest, so Midera begins life as a fully independent company, trading on Nasdaq under the ticker "MFP." In simple terms, Midera is a leading global pure-play food processing technology platform, the company behind how the world’s food actually gets made, with equipment and technology underpinning production across protein, bakery, and snack.

Midera generated $853 million in net sales in fiscal 2025. We employ roughly 2,800 people worldwide, operate 29 manufacturing facilities and 4 innovation centers across six continents, and support a global installed base of more than 100,000 units. The business sits at the intersection of essential infrastructure and recurring value: roughly 40% of our revenue comes from high-margin, recurring aftermarket parts and service.

We also start our independent journey with a strong balance sheet, which gives us significant capacity to fund our growth strategy from day one. Governance is led by an experienced eight-member board chaired by Robert Nerbonne, with deep public company, financial, and food industry expertise.

What are some of the top strategic priorities of the company? Where do you plan to focus your resources over the next few years to drive growth?

Mark Salman: Our growth strategy is built on four self-reinforcing pillars. First, Total Line Solutions: our ability to design, integrate, commission, and support a complete production line is unique in the industry, and it delivers meaningful ROI for customers while driving larger orders and higher aftermarket attachment.

Second, market penetration through innovation and geographic expansion, supported by our four innovation centers in the U.S., Italy, and India and a funnel of more than 70 innovations in development.

Third, aftermarket expansion: with over 100,000 units installed and greater than 90% aftermarket attachment on Total Line Solutions, we see significant headroom to grow this stable, high-margin revenue stream.

Fourth, disciplined M&A to seize the opportunity in a highly fragmented market.

Underpinning all of this is a clear path to continued margin expansion: improving performance without relying on future acquisitions to get there. We’ll also continue investing in the fastest-growing categories our customers care about: poultry, premium bakery, pinsa and artisan bread, and portable protein snacks.

How are technologies such as AI, machine vision, robotics, and automation transforming food processing, and where is Midera investing to stay ahead of these trends?

Mark Salman: Automation is one of the most significant structural drivers in our industry. Food manufacturers face a projected 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing positions globally by 2030, and they’re investing to improve throughput, yield, food safety, and sustainability all at once.

What’s important to understand is that structural forces like labor scarcity, food safety requirements, and even GLP-1-driven reformulation have been tailwinds, not headwinds, for Midera: our equipment is needs-based infrastructure, the very technology producers rely on to reformulate, automate, and meet rising demand.

Our equipment increasingly answers that call: robotic handling and automated guided vehicles, vision-enabled systems for slicing/packaging, and facility-level automation are now core parts of our Total Line Solutions. Technology and AI are embedded in the Midera Operating System, and as equipment sophistication grows, so does our high-margin aftermarket opportunity, because customers increasingly rely on us to coordinate the hardware, software, and service.

Tell us more about the acquisition-driven strategy at Midera and the opportunities you see in the near future.

Mark Salman: M&A is a core component of Midera’s growth strategy, as our platform was built through more than 30 acquisitions since 2005, and we’ve refined a repeatable playbook for origination, integration, and operational improvement.

The opportunity ahead is substantial: we operate in an approximately $70 billion global market with more than 2,500 food processing equipment manufacturers, where we hold only about 1% share. With management attention no longer shared across a broader portfolio, we’re targeting three to five transactions a year, positioning Midera as the platform of record in a market that’s still more than 90% fragmented.

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